Equal Rights Advocates Receives Transformative Gift From the Yield Giving Open Call

March 19. 2024

For Immediate Release
Mar 19, 2024

Media Contact
Nazirah Ahmad
[email protected]

(San Francisco, CA) – Today, MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving announced Equal Rights Advocates as one of its Yield Giving Open Call awardees working with people and in places experiencing the greatest need in the United States. This transformational gift recognizes the organization’s powerful work building gender and racial justice nationwide and dramatically improving economic security for millions of women and families.

In selecting Equal Rights Advocates, Yield Giving recognized the organization as one of its top scoring awardees. The selection process applauded Equal Rights Advocates’ partnership with community and coalition partners while maintaining a strong emphasis on impact and scale through campaigns, policy, and litigation centering members of the most historically marginalized communities.

“Equal Rights Advocates is humbled by Yield Giving’s recognition that communities power national change. We are enormously grateful for this incredible gift to fuel our work across the country.”
– Noreen Farrell, Executive Director

In March 2023, Yield Giving launched an Open Call for community-led, community-focused organizations whose explicit purpose is to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means, and groups who have met with discrimination and other systemic obstacles. The Open Call received 6,353 applications and initially planned to give 250 $1 million awards. In the Fall of 2023, organizations top-rated by their peers advanced to a second round of review by an external Evaluation Panel recruited for its experience relevant to this cause, and underwent a final round of due diligence. In light of the incredible work of the awardees organizations, as judged by their peers and external panelists, the donor team decided to expand both the awardee pool and the award amount.

Equal Rights Advocates protects and expands access to economic and educational opportunities for women and girls, including gender-expansive workers and students, focusing on low-income communities of color. The organization provides direct legal services and representation, conducts community research, and leads collaborative community impact initiatives that translate community needs into bold policy reforms. With a diverse team of staff from communities most impacted by inequities, ERA coordinates hundreds of groups across the country to inform and support each other, pool resources, and work together to influence local, state and national efforts. Its systems-reform targets are informed by community listening and bolstered by storytelling that is changing narratives harmful to progress.

Building on 50 years of groundbreaking wins, ERA leads legal impact and public policy efforts at the federal and state level. The organization’s community-fueled power has led to 100+ groundbreaking policy reforms and economic security wins now benefiting millions of families. These wins address poverty and gender-based violence, defend reproductive healthcare, expand access to affordable childcare and paid family leave, increase quality jobs with fair pay and protections from harassment and discrimination, and support families. ERA also leads impact litigation to enforce civil and constitutional rights, from the smallest county courthouses to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Equal Rights Advocates is humbled by Yield Giving’s recognition that communities power national change. We are enormously grateful for this incredible gift to fuel our work across the country,” said Equal Rights Advocates Executive Director Noreen Farrell. “With this generous support, Equal Rights Advocates will continue our powerful combination of strategies driving dozens of reforms each year and building gender, racial, and economic justice. At this critical time for gender equality and our democracy, this investment from Yield Giving will propel ERA’s vision of a better life for those most impacted by inequities.”

Equal Rights Advocates dedicates itself to ongoing stewardship of its vital collective impact networks — leading innovative collaborations between nonprofits, labor groups, and community organizations — to build community power. Funding validates and will support high impact campaigns like Equal Pay Today and Stronger California, and other ERA work incubating hundreds of community-informed system reforms and replicating them nationwide. 

“We are excited that our partnership with Yield Giving has resonated with so many organizations,” said Cecilia Conrad, CEO of Lever for Change. “In a world teeming with potential and talent, the Open Call has given us an opportunity to identify, uplift, and empower transformative organizations that often remain Unseen.”

More information on the Yield Giving Open Call and other initiatives can be found at leverforchange.org.

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Equal Rights Advocates
Equal Rights Advocates protects and expands gender justice, including in workplaces and schools across the country. Since 1974, they have been fighting on the front lines of social justice to protect and advance rights and opportunities for women, girls, and people of all gender identities through groundbreaking legal cases and bold legislation that sets the stage for the rest of the nation. To learn more, visit equalrights.org. 

Yield Giving
Established by MacKenzie Scott to share a financial fortune created through the effort of countless people, Yield Giving is named after a belief in adding value by giving up control. To date, Yield’s network of staff and advisors has yielded over $16,500,000,000 to 1,900+ non-profit teams to use as they see fit for the benefit of others. To learn more, visit yieldgiving.com.

Lever for Change
Lever for Change connects donors with bold solutions to the world’s biggest problems—including issues like racial inequity, gender inequality, lack of access to economic opportunity, and climate change. Using an inclusive, equitable model and due diligence process, Lever for Change creates customized challenges and other tailored funding opportunities. Top-ranked teams and challenge finalists become members of the Bold Solutions Network—a growing global network that helps secure additional funding, amplify members’ impact, and accelerate social change. Founded in 2019 as a nonprofit affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Lever for Change has influenced over $1.7 billion in grants to date and provided support to more than 145 organizations. To learn more, visit leverforchange.org.